This book gives a clearly written, authoritative introduction to social-scientific criticism of the New Testament, including the rise of this method, its practitioners and the focal points of their work, how the method is applied to the interpretation of the biblical text, and the presuppositions and procedures of the method. Four appendices; glossary; two bibliographies.
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This book gives a clearly written, authoritative introduction to social-scientific criticism of the New Testament, including the rise of this method, its practitioners and the focal points of their work, how the method is applied to the interpretation of the biblical text, and the presuppositions and procedures of the method. Four appendices; glossary; two bibliographies.
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Social-scientific Criticism and Historical Criticism
-Social-scientific criticism expands the tradition of the historical critical method.
-The Bible is a historical text although is not read for historical data alone.
-It is necessary for understanding to come to the text realizing that it is a product of a certain social, historical, and cultural landscape and must be read as such. This move from historical conditioning to historical, cultural, and social conditioning is really the presupposition that underpins social-scientific interpretation.
-If NT interpretation is a historical enterprise then other disciplines from human sciences, such as the social sciences, must play a part in it.
Social Scientific Criticism.
-Social scientific criticism as such has only really been around since the 70's. It did, however, exist latently in other approaches. Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza says: ?I don't think there is a historical method without a social or sociological awareness and conceptualization.? (Martin 125)
-The Pioneers: John Gager, John Elliott, Gerd Theissen, Wayne Meeks.
-Social Scientific criticism utilizes, to aid one in the interpretation of scripture, recent developments in the social sciences such as economics, psychology, sociology, and cultural anthropology. ?Social-scientific criticism of the Bible is that phase of the exegetical task which analyzes the social and cultural dimensions of the text and of its environmental context through the utilization of the perspectives, theory, models, and research of the social sciences. As a component of the historical-critical method of exegesis, social scientific criticism investigates biblical texts as meaningful configurations of language intended to communicate between composers and audiences.? (Elliot p. 7)
-Social scientific critics study:
-1) The social aspects of the form and content of a text, and its conditioning factors.
-2) The correlation of the text's linguistic, literary, theological, and social ideas.
-3) How the text is a reflection of, and response to, the times it was written in.
-?Social-scientific criticism studies the text as both a reflection of and a response to the social and cultural settings in which the text was produced. Its aim is the determination of meanings explicit and implicit in the text, meanings made possible and shaped by the social and cultural systems inhabited by both authors and intended audiences.? (Elliot p. 8)
Why the Need?
-NT texts have a social dimension that many of the methodologies do not sufficiently address.
-It is important to keep in mind that the NT books all have social contexts.
-The NT often refers to social relations.
-?In their language, content, structure, strategies, and meaning, then, these texts presuppose, encode, and communicate information about the social systems in which they were produced and to which they were a response.? (Elliot p. 10)
-Social-scientific criticism is especially necessary when we consider the time that has elapsed since the NT was written down.
-Historical criticism was coming up with lots of good facts and theories, but social science criticism seeks to inter-relate the texts and social contexts.
-?Thus it has gradually become apparent to a growing number of scholars?that historical criticism has proved inadequate to the task of a comprehensive interpretation of the Bible and the biblical world. Many biblical interpreters now agree that a more sophisticated method is required for examining and understanding the bible writings as products of and responses to their social and cultural environments.? (Elliot p. 13)
-Social-scientific criticism has been said to fulfill a ?heuristic? function. Heuristic comes from the Greek word which means ?to discover?. Social-scientific criticism aids in new discovery and broadens the horizons of the interpretive imagination.
